5 Mistakes You May Be Making with Your Career Site

When it comes to applying for jobs, most job seekers have a “try before you buy” mentality: 64 percent will do research on a company before they apply, according to recent CareerBuilder research. Before they apply, they want to know what they’d be in for, and what’s in it for them.

When you run a small business, a career site can be one of your strongest recruitment marketing tools. A career site is your exclusive platform to show potential employees what makes your company special and why they should work from you.

While your career site can be a boon for attracting job seekers, it may also be doing the opposite. Avoid these common career site mistakes to keep candidates engaged, interested and applying to your company.

You Don’t Have a Talent Network. Not every candidate who visits your career site is ready to apply right away. Give these job seekers the option to join a talent network (or talent community), where they can leave their information and opt-in to receive relevant news and updates about the company and new opportunities. Having a talent network (such as CareerBuilder’s Talentstream Engage) helps you stay top of mind with candidates and easily re-engage them over time, making it easier to fill positions when they open up.

You Don’t Look at Analytics. How do you know how well your career site is performing if you’re not measuring it? Do you pay attention to how many visitors your career site is getting, which pages they are visiting and for how long? Do you know the ratio of people who visit to people who apply (or ratio of visitors to those who join your talent network)? Measurement is key to understanding not only your audience and how to engage them, but where there is room to improve your career site.

Your Site Isn’t Optimized for Mobile Devices. Having a mobile-friendly career site is essential today. According to CareerBuilder’s 2016 Candidate Experience study, 40 percent of job seekers visit company career sites from their mobile devices. And when they do, they expect a seamless, user-friendly experience, which they won’t get if your career site isn’t mobile-friendly. According to the same study, 95 percent of job seekers will fail to complete an application if the application process is not mobile-optimized or takes more than two steps. That’s too significant of a number to ignore. The fastest way to mitigate candidate drop-off is to make sure your career site is optimized for mobile devices. (If you’re using CareerBuilder’s Talentstream Engage solution, you need not worry about this, as your career site is already optimized for mobile devices.)

You Tell, You Don’t Show. Sure, you can say that working at your company is “unlike working anywhere else,” but job seekers want to see it. Use compelling visuals (in other words, NO stock images) and video to convey “a day in the life” at your company. Consider including a welcome message from the CEO, employee testimonials and photos from company outings. Highlight any “best places to work” awards or recognition you’ve received - anything that makes you truly stand out from every other company out there.

You Don’t Interact With It Yourself. How often do you visit your career site to see what candidates experience? Take a few minutes to visit your career site and see what visitors see. If you find it hard to navigate or find the information you need, visually off-putting or otherwise uninteresting, chances are candidates do, too. Ask a few employees to do the same and provide any feedback one where they see room for improvement.

Ready to build a career site that brings in top talent? Check out Talent Network, which can be scaled to fit your small business needs.

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